1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a liquid crystal display device of fringe field switching type, and more particularly to a thin film transistor substrate of fringe field switching type and a fabricating method thereof that are adaptive for simplifying a process.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a liquid crystal display device controls light transmittance of a liquid crystal having a dielectric anisotropy using an electric field to thereby display a picture. To this end, a liquid crystal display device includes a liquid crystal display panel for displaying a picture by a liquid crystal cell matrix, and a driving circuit for driving the liquid crystal display panel.
Referring to FIG. 1, a related art liquid crystal display panel is comprised of a color filter substrate 10 and a thin film transistor substrate 20 that are joined to each other with a liquid crystal 24 therebetween.
The color filter substrate 10 includes a black matrix 4, a color filter 6 and a common electrode 8 that are sequentially provided on an upper glass substrate 2. The black matrix 4 is provided in a matrix type on the upper glass substrate 2. The black matrix 4 divides an area of the upper glass substrate 2 into a plurality of cell areas to be provided with the color filter 6, and prevents a light interference between adjacent cells and an external light reflection. The color filter 6 is provided at the cell area divided by the black matrix 4 in such a manner to be divided into red (R), green (G) and blue (B) ones, thereby transmitting red, green and blue lights. The common electrode 8 is formed of a transparent conductive layer entirely formed onto the color filter 6, and supplies a common voltage Vcom that serves as a reference voltage upon driving of the liquid crystal 24. Further, an over-coat layer (not illustrated) for smoothing the color filter 6 may be provided between the color filter 6 and the common electrode 8.
The thin film transistor substrate 20 includes a thin film transistor 18 and a pixel electrode 22 provided for each cell area defined by an crossing between a gate line 14 and a data line 16 on a lower glass substrate 12. The thin film transistor 18 applies a data signal from the data line 16 to the pixel electrode 22 in response to a gate signal from the gate line 14. The pixel electrode 22 formed of a transparent conductive layer supplies a data signal from the thin film transistor 18 to drive the liquid crystal 24.
The liquid crystal 24 having a dielectric anisotropy is rotated in accordance with an electric field formed by a data signal from the pixel electrode 22 and a common voltage Vcom from the common electrode 8 to control light transmittance, thereby implementing a gray scale level.
Further, a liquid crystal display panel includes a spacer (not illustrated) for uniformly maintaining a cell gap between the color filter substrate 10 and the thin film transistor substrate 20. The spacer employs a ball spacer or a column spacer.
In such the liquid crystal display panel, the color filter substrate 10 and the thin film transistor substrate 20 are formed by a plurality of mask processes. Herein, one mask process includes a lot of processes such as thin film deposition (coating), cleaning, photolithography (hereinafter, photo process), etching, photo-resist stripping and inspection processes, etc. Particularly, since the thin film transistor substrate includes the semiconductor process and requires the plurality of mask processes, it has a complicate fabricating process to act as a major factor in the manufacturing cost rise of the liquid crystal display panel.
Meanwhile, the liquid crystal display panel is largely classified into a vertical electric field applying type and a horizontal electric field applying type depending upon with a direction of the electric field driving the liquid crystal.
The liquid crystal display panel of vertical electric field applying type drives a liquid crystal in a twisted nematic (TN) mode with a vertical electric field formed between a pixel electrode and a common electrode arranged in opposition to each other on the upper and lower substrate. The liquid crystal display panel of vertical electric field applying type has an advantage of a large aperture ratio while having a drawback of a narrow viewing angle about 90°.
The liquid crystal display panel of horizontal electric field applying type drives a liquid crystal in an in plane switching (IPS) mode with a horizontal electric field between the pixel electrode and the common electrode arranged in parallel to each other on the lower substrate. The liquid crystal display panel of horizontal electric field applying type has an advantage of a wide viewing angle about 160°, but has a disadvantage of low aperture ratio and transmittance.
Recently, in order to overcome the disadvantage of the liquid crystal display panel of horizontal electric field applying type, there has been suggested a liquid crystal display panel of fringe field switching (FFS) type operated by a fringe field. The FFS-type liquid crystal display panel includes a common electrode and a pixel electrode having an insulating film therebetween at each pixel area, and is provided such that a distance between the common electrode and pixel electrodes is narrower than a distance between the upper substrate and the lower substrates, to thereby provide a fringe field. Further, the fringe field allows all of liquid crystal molecules filled between the upper and lower substrates to be operated at each pixel area to thereby improve an aperture ratio and a transmittance.
However, since the thin film transistor substrate included in the FFS-type liquid crystal display panel also requires a plurality of mask processes including a semiconductor process, it has a problem of a complicate fabricating process.